


First Mate, Soulmate

by kkuroshii



Series: The Moments I share With You [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M, basically soulmates, luffy and zoro's first meeting, you could read as gen if you want, zoro's a grumpy boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 13:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20779163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkuroshii/pseuds/kkuroshii
Summary: They make short work of the marines, falling into sync as easily as if they were comrades who had been together for years, meeting back up after some time apart. Fighting with Luffy comes as easy as breathing to Zoro, and he can’t help but wonder what accomplishing his dream with this boy would be like





	First Mate, Soulmate

**Author's Note:**

> I love Luffy and Zoro's first meeting, so a wrote a oneshot (actually might add another chapter?? Idk) just detailing their first encounter from Zoro's point of view.

The heat was simmering, casting mirages over the light sand in the base. It was always hot, or at least it had been as long as he’d been strapped there. Zoro had long since given in to wondering about the heat, leaving himself to hang there, waiting for the month’s end to come. He loses track of the hours as they pass, favoring losing himself in his own thoughts over agonizing over keeping track of the time. He knows he’s not in the best shape, even he struggles with being strapped to a post with no food for a month, but he can’t find it in himself to care all that much. Zoro thinks of that small girl and her mother in that tavern, and can’t find any regret within himself for taking on this punishment. That pleases him. He aims to live a life with no regrets after all. So he’ll survive. He’ll survive, because Hawk eye Mihawk is still out there, and Zoro is still determined to beat him.

There’s not much to do in this empty courtyard as it is, and the options aren’t improved by being tied to a wooden post, so Zoro finds ways to quell his boredom. In the absence of activity he slips into restless naps and bouts of sleep often ending in nightmares and abrupt wakings. He finds himself eventually beginning to avoid naps, as he’s always visited by the same bright eyed, dark haired girl, grinning down at him, holding a wooden katana to his throat.

Surprisingly, the only thing he looks forward to is when the Marine captain's son visits him, Helm-something. The man is disgusting and his presence revolts Zoro, but it’s also the only time he has anything to do besides stare at the ground or nap. So Zoro passes the month with his only conversations being held with a snobby blonde haired man, and the dark haired girl he imagines standing in front of him, teasing him for his situation.

He doesn’t know what time it is when the two people peeking over the wall catch his attention, he does know, however, the level of annoyance he feels. He’s not here to be gawked at by some kids looking to see a ‘criminal’. He snarls a couple words at them, almost not entirely sure what he says, he just knows that he’s trying to intimidate them, get them to go away. So he was mildly surprised when only one of them seemed frightened by his aggressive countenance, the other just gives a slight smile, watching the pirate hunter on the pole. He’s about to say something else, when a thud gets all of their attention. 

The noise turns out to be Rika, the small girl he protected on his first day here. She motions at the two boys to be quiet, and hops over the wall, carrying a small package. She walks towards him and pauses a few feet away, fumbling with the cloth in her hands. 

“Do you want something?” He asks her, quietly desperate to get her away from the danger he was tied her to save her from. “Get lost.”

Undeterred, the girl holds out some rice balls to him, a bright smile spreading across her face, as if she hadn’t just broken into a marine base to give food to a criminal. She offers them to him, but he vehemently declines, pride winning out over hunger. He shouts at her to go away, threatens to kill her, anything to get her out of here. Her smile falls, he sees tears begin to well in her eyes. Zoro’s about to reconsider just to prevent tears when the gates bang open suddenly, revealing the unsightly form of that Marine’s son and the few guards he brings with him.

Zoro stares at the ground, reeling in his anger at the blonde man, Helmeppo, he reminds himself. Anger wouldn’t get him anywhere while he’s tied to the post, no matter how much he had wanted to slice him open when he threw Rika over the wall. He never heard a scream so he hoped that meant someone saved her, and not the worse alternative. 

The wind changes minutely and Zoro looks up in front of him, eyes taking in the sight of one of the boys from before standing in front of him. If he had been in a better condition, Zoro may have wondered how he reached him so quietly. He takes in the boy’s appearance. Average, he thinks. There’s nothing too special about the boy in front of him, who wears a red vest and a straw hat, and who just simply stares at him.

“You still haven’t left yet?” He grinds out, barely able to hide the anger simmering just under the surface of his skin, “Leave now, or else he’ll go tell his dad about it.”

“Oh yeah?” Says the boy. It’s not a challenge, not the way he says it, with an airy indifference, bluntly put as though Zoro had just told him what the weather was going to be like today. “I’m looking for someone to join my pirate crew.” Zoro snorts at that.

“Pirate? Ha…You think I’d lower myself to that level? No thanks.” Pirates were scum, Zoro wasn’t going to become an actual criminal because so guy decided he wanted to play pirates. But the boy responds with a surge of emotion that takes him off guard.

“It’s my dream! There’s nothing wrong with being a pirate!” Nothing wrong? Sure Zoro never really had any personal beef with pirates, but he’d heard enough stories and seen enough devastation caused by them to know otherwise. Was this boy delusional?

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna set me free and force me to join you.”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet, you’ve got a pretty bad reputation you know.” Zoro’s not surprised. ‘Pirate Hunter Zoro’ is the name he’s made for himself recently, and he won’t pretend he hasn’t heard the rumors people spread about him.

“A bad reputation huh?” The chuckle Zoro gives holds no mirth. “I’ll never join you, because I’ve got my own plans for the future.” The boy tilts his head at him, strawhat sliding ever so slightly over his hair. He takes this as an invitation to continue. “I don’t need your help, I can get out of here on my own. All I have to do is survive here for a month and I’ll be a free man.” The boy in front of him says nothing, just continuing his staring and patiently waiting for his short speech to be finished. “All I’ve got to do is survive here for one month, then I’ll be free to pursue my dream!” The boys gaze remains on Zoro for another moment before he tips his head back to look above him at the sky.

“Hmmm… I see.” Is all he says, gaze thoughtful. Eyes returning to Zoro he says animatedly “I don’t think that I’d last one week here without food!” Zoro starts a bit at the change in demeanor.

“That’s the difference between you and I.” This guy in front of him doesn’t appear to be all that strong, rather he’s practically a stick standing there, gazing at him with those wide eyes. And yet, Zoro doesn’t really believe that. Personally he prides himself on being a good judge of power and there’s an air to this boy unlike any he’s felt before. It’s feeling of quiet strength, of a controlled power hiding beneath the surface. Experience tells him that guys like that are the most dangerous. “So go look for a crew somewhere else.”

When the boy turns to leave, (a small part of him feels disappointed at that), he feels a sharp pain in his stomach, one that’s been plaguing him almost constantly since he’d been tied up here. “Oi,” he says to catch the strawhat guy’s attention again. “Can you pick that up for me?” The boy turns to look in the direction he nodded at, looking over at the crushed rice ball sitting in the dirt.

“You’re going to eat this?” He says, but there’s not actually much shock behind it, as if he said it to gauge Zoro’s motivation. “It’s more of a dirt ball than a rice ball now…” The prospects of finally getting to eat something win out over Zoro’s now extremely thin patience.

“Shut up and give it to me.”

The rice ball almost had more rocks in it that rice but Zoro choked it down, coughing and hacking all the way. The straw hat boy began to give him a ‘I told you so’ about the state of the rocky rice, when Zoro cuts him off, needing an almost favor from an almost rescuer.

“Tell the kid…’ He coughs violently once and takes a shuddering breath before continuing. “Tell her, I said it was delicious. Tell her I ate it all.” Suddenly the boy laughs, face spreading into a wide smile so different from the contemplative look he’d been sporting for the entirety of the conversation up until this point. Zoro would have been surprised, but at this point this guy was too weird and he was just too tired to care all that much, though it did piss him off a bit, but then what didn’t at this point. Laughter continues, ringing out in the empty courtyard, the sound out of place in the compound that seems to suffocate in silence. He watches the strawhat bounce on raven hair as it’s owner lets out his unconventional laughs, filling Zoro’s ears with, honestly, the best sounds he’s heard in awhile. His eyes slip closed as he sits, sensing that the boy in front of him as fulfilled his purpose for being here, and sits, content to listen to the mirth ringing out. He seems to be correct, when he hears the laughs die down to giggles, and listens to the sounds of feet moving across the dirt, getting quieter as they tread farther and farther away, taking the left with them. The air around Zoro seems to grow colder as he’s surrounded by silence once again.

“Are you the son of the devil?” He asks earnestly. It comes off as a joke but at this point Zoro’s seriously wondering. He watches as the already bright smile on Monkey D. Luffy’s face grow impossibly wider, contorting the small scar on his cheek. His hands are outstretched, offering to Zoro a lifeline, his swords and his freedom. He thinks of this rubberman, breaking into a marine base to steal swords for a man he just met, he thinks of that bright smile, shining with such familiarity that Zoro felt as though he knew it already, like it was already meant to be by his side, as Luffy declares to him that he’ll be the pirate king. It’s said with such confidence Zoro almost, almost, believes it.

“Rather than die here, I’ll accept you request and become a pirate!” His own grin spreads almost as wide as the rubber man across from him. He, just for a moment, feels a burst of excitement run through his chest. A pirate…

They make short work of the marines, falling into sync as easily as if they were comrades who had been together for years, meeting back up after some time apart. Fighting with Luffy comes as easy as breathing to Zoro, and he can’t help but wonder what accomplishing his dream with this boy would be like. He thinks of his declaration to Luffy, ‘I’m going to become the world’s greatest swordsman! I no longer care if my name is clean or not, as long as it’s known worldwide! If you do something that ends up in the way of my goal,I will have you cut your stomach open to say sorry!’ The instant he said those last few words, he felt as though they were unnecessary. Looking at the rubberman’s smile and thinking back to that passion towards his own goal, Zoro knows that Luffy will never get in his way. ‘Good! The pirate king will need only the best on his crew!’ And just like that he felt the tension in his mind ease, and the first seeds of trust came spilling in. After all, the word captain felt so incredibly natural just rolling off his lips after he defeated the marine leader. He smiled, his first genuinely soft, happy smile, quite unlike the feral grin he had shared with Luffy before, since he had come to this base. The smile remains on his face as he falls to the ground, the world fading to black.

Zoro and Luffy immediately fall in a steady rhythm, an ease surrounding their interactions that shouldn’t be there between two strangers who just met. Zoro can’t really explain why he trusts Luffy so quickly and easily, especially when he’s never really been the trusting type, though by just a glance you can tell Luffy’s the opposite. But there’s something about this stranger that compels Zoro to follow his sense of adventure. That, he supposes, is definitely something a pirate king should do.

Together they pile in to Luffy’s small wooden boat and they cast off, waving their goodbyes to the islands residents. It doesn’t take long for Zoro to figure out that Luffy has no navigational experience whatsoever, and a voice in the back of his mind tells him not to be surprised. Since Zoro doesn’t really have much seafaring knowledge either, they decide to sort of drift, letting the wind take them where it may. They sail all day, Zoro watching Luffy, Luffy watching the horizon, pointing out random things to Zoro as he pleased. It passes with no incidents or notable activity, and not much movement from the two until the sun begins to dip below the horizon, staining the sky as red as Luffy’s vest.

It’s night when they truly have another conversation beyond the descriptions of whatever Luffy could find in the blank expanse of the ocean.

“Zoro?”

“Yeah?” They’re laying together on the bottom of the boat, arms touching, eyes gazing at the sky and stars above. He listens to Luffy’s soft breaths as he waits for the rest of what the rubber man is thinking. He pairs them with the soft rocking of the waves beneath them.

“We’re friends now you know.” Luffy’s hand brushes against his. A whisper of a touch, but enough to send goosebumps up his arm. Zoro thinks for a moment, mulling over his response. There’s obviously more meaning to the tentative statement Luffy offered him, a deeper meaning residing in the boys head. Zoro figures he knows and responds just as simple, just as full of meaning.

“Of course.” He can’t see the smile on Luffy’s face as he looks at the stars, but he can certainly feel it, the warmth of it leaking into his bones. Zoro stares up at the sky and smiles softly. He knows he’s keeping his vow to live his life with no regrets, knows he will never regret this moment, this decision to trust a wild boy who bursts in to a marine base, full bright smiles and unpredictable claims to be pirate king. He knows he will never regret staking his life on this pirate, on Monkey D. Luffy. And he never does.

**Author's Note:**

> So that was that! Comment what you thought and feel free to let me know if I should expand on this in the future!


End file.
